Timeline for Can we determine the game-theoretically best first move by White in chess without solving chess?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Aug 22, 2021 at 23:31 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Aug 22, 2021 at 22:29 | comment | added | markvs | Everybody knows that $d4$ is the best first move in chess, | |
| Aug 22, 2021 at 22:07 | comment | added | Richard Stanley | For information on "give-away" chess (or losing chess), see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Losing_chess. In particular, White can win the main variant of losing chess by beginning 1.e3. | |
| Aug 22, 2021 at 20:52 | comment | added | paul garrett | As a data point, in the mid-1970's, at Princeton, Kiyoshi Igusa apparently showed by case-by-case treatment that some version (I do not recall the details) of "give-away" chess is a forced win (I think for white). My recollection of him, and of his notebook full of stuff makes me think he was entirely scrupulous, so it is/was plausibly correct. | |
| Aug 22, 2021 at 20:15 | answer | added | Timothy Chow | timeline score: 8 | |
| Aug 22, 2021 at 16:41 | comment | added | Will Sawin | @CarloBeenakker One could define a variant of chess where players have a $1/1,000,000$ chance each turn of being forced to select each move at random among all legal moves. This would (imperfectly) model chess as played by human experts far beyond the ability of anyone alive now but which still make some mistakes, and it would be very unlikely that two moves are equivalent under this system. I would expect that the moves considered best now are more likely than other moves to be best by such a definition, but not with very high confidence (for multiple reasons). | |
| Aug 22, 2021 at 12:46 | comment | added | Martin M. W. | This may be the opposite of what you want, but for a game with sufficiently symmetric initial conditions you might be able to say any first move will win without explicitly solving the game. For example, some versions of Hex on a torus-shaped board; see mathoverflow.net/questions/282088/study-of-hex-on-the-torus | |
| Aug 22, 2021 at 6:53 | comment | added | Carlo Beenakker | from the game theoretic point of view all first moves in chess are likely to be equivalent, leading to a draw; from the point of view of an expert player, e4 or d4 are the "best first moves". | |
| Aug 22, 2021 at 6:53 | comment | added | magnus | That is true but I had more "realistic" (which is admittedly vague) games in mind. Like in chess you can't say for sure if e4 or d4 strictly dominates. | |
| Aug 22, 2021 at 6:51 | comment | added | Gerry Myerson | Well, you could have a game where every opening move but one is an immediate loss. For example, modified chess, where the zeroth move is deciding whether to play against Magnus Carlsen or against me. | |
| Aug 22, 2021 at 6:47 | review | First posts | |||
| Aug 22, 2021 at 7:56 | |||||
| Aug 22, 2021 at 6:43 | history | asked | magnus | CC BY-SA 4.0 |